Her scalp itched as the leaves of the plant tickled her head. I tickle your roots, you tickle my top, she thought to herself. Dig and drop, scoop deep, low, where the soil still holds a small amount of wetness, churn it upwards, and repeat. Do this until your fingers are red and raw. She knew the steps and performed them with finesse. Her face became red to match. She leaned into the rhythm, her knees aching with the repeated push of her weight. The roots came loose, but only slightly so. She dug her fingers under their resistance and pulled. With a snap, the plant came free, and she fell back with a sigh. Easy enough.
Well, it's near noon, she thought. And I'm ahead for the day. Perhaps I'll get a little snooze in.
She fell back against the tepid soil and breathed the steaming air. If she thought about it, she could almost see the steam extend from her mouth as she exhaled, the heated air churning in her lungs, only to rejoin its aerial birthplace. It was hot. Her body cried sweat in response. She exhaled along with the waves of liquid leaving her body. Not long now until she slept. And with one last sigh, she was out…
And did not reawaken until that evening, as her husband called her name from the greenhouse door. His return from work had seen supper uncooked, the home unoccupied, and any note of his wife's whereabouts unwritten. Knowing her tendency to become distracted by the plants and her greenhouse, her husband wandered into the backyard.
Ebba!
His shout disrupted a lingering haze. She rolled stiffly in the piquant earth. With a jolt, she realized the plant had a leaf wrapped firmly around her ankle. Wrapped tight. Like how a man would hold it. She gave a weak thrust to jolt her foot free. The plant strangled her ankle then, and she squealed in pain. Some sort of thorn needled her, right in the center of her heel, and just as quickly as it had appeared, it withdrew. The plant righted itself and held still, innocuous and serene. She called out to it softly before falling into a gray sleep. Unable to open her eyes, she heard Kerr's footsteps tromp through her garden before falling to the ground beside her.
When she awoke, she was in her and Kerr's bed, her feet elevated on a memory foam pillow. Kerr sat in the reading chair and sprang forward as she opened her eyes.
"Ebba, what happened?" he asked.
She groaned and rubbed her eyes, feeling a tingle in her heel.
"Did you fall?"
"No, I --," she stopped, unsure of herself. What had happened out in the greenhouse? "One of the plants, I think I poked myself on a thorn. The pain and the heat made me dizzy, so I guess I fainted?"
Kerr chuckled, "Oh, Ebba. I always tell you, you spend way too much time with those plants."
"I don't think it was the plant's fault, Kerr. Anyways, it was your plant I was tending to."
"My red anthurium?"
"Yeah, you said it needed new soil."
"Oh sweet, thanks hon."
She rolled her eyes in sync with her rolling over in bed, "You're welcome, Kerr."
He eyed her carefully then, perched just so on the edge of the bed mattress, "Are you sure you feel okay, my dear?"
"Yes, I'll be fine. Can you grab me some water? I think that greenhouse heat made me dehydrated."
"Sure." He made for the door, but then paused at the threshold, "That anthurium is a special plant, you know."
She nodded, "It's fucking huge, way bigger than other anthuriums I've worked with."
"That's not the only way it's special."
She nodded again. It was an heirloom plant, passed down to Kerr from his grandfather and father. His family seemed to have some sort of luck when it came to that specific plant. The thing had lived well over fifty years, much longer than any anthurium she had ever heard of. Thinking about the plant's history, she almost forgot about the strange encounter she had had earlier that day. Almost.
When Kerr returned with the water, he stood anxiously at the corner of the bed, like a child who had been sick in the middle of the night.
"Can I help you, Kerr?"
"It's nothing, it's just," he sighed and looked at his feet, "Do you think you'll be able to make dinner later?"
She groaned and sat up in bed, "Are you serious?"
"Don't even worry about it, I'll scrounge something up. I can improvise."
He left without saying whether or not he would be scrounging something for her as well.
That night, in her sleep, she was back in that crushing heat. She tried to swim through the air, it felt thick enough to do so, but remained firmly planted on the ground. Before her, the anthurium rose, its red flamingo flowers shining wax-like in the haze. She tried to touch it, but jerked her hand back with a start. It was hot! stove-top hot. Pulling her hand away to nurse her wound, she saw the red of her burn bubble up, then sink slowly into her skin. Rather than healing, it felt more like her body had just swallowed the pain whole, tucked it away where it could be handled more effectively. She felt woozy again, her body poured with sweat. A fever like no other tore itself through like a shockwave. Fire was building, building, growing inside her.
She sat up in bed and vomited into her lap.
Kerr stirred in his sleep but did not wake.
A cool breeze filtered through an open window and she leaned towards it, wishing more than anything to be cold, cool, even lukewarm. Anything but hot. She rubbed her sore heel and eyed the anthurium propagation that sat on Kerr's bedside table. He sure loves that damn plant. At least the big one was outside, away from where she slept.
She rolled out of bed to attend to the mess she had made. Her movements cause Kerr to stir in his sleep, and he blinked with heavy lids, "What's the matter?"
"It's ok, Kerr. I was just sick in my sleep."
Noticing the mess that lay beside him, he flew into the air.
"Dammit, Ebba! Why didn't you wake me up immediately?"
"I basically did," she remarked, pulling away the soiled blanket.
She padded barefoot to the bathroom, and startled when Kerr shouted, "What on earth? Ebba, your foot!"
Propping her sore foot on the sink, she flicked on the lights and felt herself grow pale. Her foot and ankle were laid waste with strange fleshy bumps, bulging and dark in color. Placing her hand over the unsightly injury, she couldn't stand more than a moment of direct contact. The heat emanating from her body was unimaginable. Peering as closely as she could, she realized the bumps themselves were not a dark color, but rather whatever was burgeoning beneath her skin like a gigantic whitehead. Her sweat began to run in ribbons once again.
"Kerr, I think I'm having some kind of…allergic reaction to your anthurium." She swooned against the sink, catching herself. Kerr came to her side, eager to help, but sprang away as he touched her skin.
"You're burning up!"
"I swear, it's the --,"
"Are you sure it's the anthurium?"
Now was not the time for him to be protective over his inheritance plant.
"I --," and she fell hard, her temple hitting the sink.
In a daze, she felt Kerr lift her wrist and feel her pulse. He gasped in relief. Then slowly, he began to drag her limp body from the bathroom and fasten her to the bed frame.
She came to with some simple splashes from the sink. The water sizzled and popped as it touched her skin, rising through the air in a wisp of steam. She groaned and tried to sit up. Her eyes widened when she realized she was barred from doing so. She turned to him with accusing eyes.
"What are you doing?"
"What needs to be done."
"Kerr, call an ambulance. I really don't feel well."
"It's all part of the process."
"Something is wrong."
"Not yet, it isn't."
Suddenly, she became aware of his nonchalant nature, his demeanor of expectation at her suffering. I know I will not make it out of this alive. Her leg shot another ribbon of heat through her body and she contorted, trying anything to escape the burning. The green bulbs had already claimed her entire calf and were steadily encroaching past her knee.
"What did you do to me?" she asked, breathless. "How did you --,"
This time, the heat was so white-hot, she screamed. Her eyes felt as if they were melting from her skull. Surely, her organs could not withstand such temperatures for long.
"The anthurium needs body heat to live," he said. "It chose you."
Kerr pulled from the hallway the compost bin and threw hot, steaming garbage onto their bed. Next came fertilizer, soil, each detrital layer holding more heat than the last. Ebba squirmed, screamed, watched as her skin went from red to blistered to bulbous and green. Her hands shot outwards, her fingers fusing, melting together. Their color deepened into a bloody red and flipped outwards into the heart-shaped, anthurium bloom. Her thumb became the spadix, yellow and hummocked.
She looked to Kerr, who stood over her now as she had stood over the plant mere hours before. He looked sad, but resolved. His brow furrowed as her limbs locked and stiffened, her cells morphing from their squishy, vulnerable animal state to be ones of solid walls and chlorophyll. She thought of the day they met, how she had been a lonely college girl in a foreign state and he, a dazzling assistant professor of biology. How he had made her feel so known, so familiar not only with another human, but with herself. Her eyes watered as she realized her entire adult life had been spent on the arm of the same man; a man who had scooped her from near teenager-dom and made her his wife. A man who harbored an abhorrent secret which now became her burden, her downfall, her reason for dying. A cause I never chose to die for.
Unable to move, unable to fight, almost unable to speak now as the stem solidified in her throat, Ebba felt heat rise to her cheeks in embarrassment at her naivety. Glancing down the length of her body, she balked. I'm something else entirely. She was a bed of ferns and fronds and anthurium blooms, all rooting and reaching into the makeshift garden bed that Kerr had made. He ran his hands through her stems and smiled as she met his gaze. She tried to imagine how she looked then, mostly plant, but with the face of a scared animal.
"So beautiful," he said. "A worthy host for a worthy plant."
"Why?" she asked. "Why not ask me first?"
"You would have chosen this fate?"
She could not deny it.
"Then I did what I had to ensure my legacy," he mumbled. "Otherwise, you would have taken it from me."
She no longer knew this man. She could no longer hold onto her own thoughts, they leaked fast from her mind as the roots carved out pieces.
"Offer your own body up to the idol of your legacy," she spat as her senses were overcome and she was no more. At least, in this final heat, she felt somewhat warm. Destroyed in her husband's all-consuming, obsessive love, she could not help but think how nice it was in her final moments to at least be loved enough to be burned. To not be left out in the cold.
